Despite federal bailouts, the auto buying landscape has changed and may never return to what shoppers have come to expect in the last five years. If you need to buy a new vehicle now, here's what you can expect.

The nation's unemployment rate is at a 14-year high, General Motors reported a massive third-quarter loss and says it may run out of cash next year, and Ford is planning more job cuts after burning through billions of its own.

When all was said and done, futures are relatively flat. The game plan for the past two days has been to short the market going into the jobs report, and if it was not dramatically worse to push a modest rally.

The latest overall job loss numbers showed a loss of 240,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate climbed to 6.5%. This is the highest unemployment rate since March 1994. The September payroll numbers were revised to a loss of 284,000. Here is a breakdown of where the job losses were as well as which sectors were adding jobs.

Blue chips logged their biggest two-day decline on record as worries about the economy gripped the market the minute the U.S. presidential election was over. Weak outlooks from Cisco and Toyota, dismal October retail sales and the prospect of a very grim payrolls number tomorrow fueled the selloff today.

So for the past two days the short-term trade has been: fade the market in anticipation of a nonfarm payrolls report below even the loss of 200,000 jobs expected, then go for a modest rally in the middle of the day Friday.

The Big Three auto makers are meeting with the House leadership today, and they are going to be presenting scary numbers. GM in particular is likely burning through their cash horde of $25 b at a much faster rate than the $1 billion a month projecting a short while ago.

How much time does GM have? It's not going bankrupt this month or by the end of the year, but if it does not conserve its cash, and sales remain as depressed as they were in October, 2009 will be dicey.

We spend billions on highways, we already bailed out Chrysler once, and meanwhile Amtrak is constantly struggling to get funding. We should realize that in addition to being worse for the environment than mass transit, having everyone driving around in cars is dangerous period, drunk or sober.

The first priority of America's president-elect should be the appointment of a treasury secretary, and New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner is a likely candidate, financier Wilbur Ross said Tuesday.

Australia slashed interest rates Tuesday, presaging cuts expected in Europe later this week in the face of mounting evidence that the global financial crisis has already pushed much of the world into a damaging recession.